Please note: Universal Credit does not include help towards council tax. If you need help with your council tax payments you can claim Council Tax Reduction online by clicking the 'Make your claim online' button below. Find out more about Council Tax Reduction.

Claiming housing benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction

If you are not in receipt of housing benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction and want to make a claim, the quickest way to do this is by completing our online claim form (below).

If you have made a claim for Universal Credit and pay rent, your housing costs will be included in your Universal Credit payments, unless you live in supported accommodation. Please note if you have claimed Universal Credit you need to make a separate claim for Council Tax Reduction which you can do online.

What to do if your circumstances have changed

Please do not use the online new claim form to submit changes to a new or existing claim. If you need to report a change in your details or circumstances, please go to the change of circumstances page instead, where you can complete the correct online form.

To make an online claim

Click on the ‘Make your claim online’ button below which will open the new claim application form; from there, click on the ‘Start’ button and follow the onscreen instructions.

Make sure you enter an email address where asked so that once you complete the form, you'll be sent an electronic receipt along with a benefit tracking reference. This will confirm that your claim has been submitted correctly and allow us to investigate if you have a query about it.

At the end of the form you will have a list of supporting evidence that you need to provide based on the information supplied.

Supporting evidence

You can upload any supporting evidence when completing the online form. By providing evidence such as payslips, self employed accounts, proof of rent, proof of identity etc your form may be dealt with quicker and we may not have to request this at a later date which could delay your claim being processed.

Documents can be uploaded whenever you see the hyperlink ‘Upload evidence’. Please do not use ‘password protection’ on any uploaded documents, as we will not be able to open them.

How do I save and retrieve an incomplete claim?

If you wish to exit the application without submitting your claim, you will be prompted to save the form. When you do so, you will be asked to choose three security questions which you will need to enter the answers to; you will also have been given a tracking reference on-screen. If you entered an email address, you will also have been sent this tracking reference via email.

You will then need to enter the tracking reference you were given, as well as some details (such as your date of birth and National Insurance number) to gain access to your partly-completed claim.

Partly-completed claims are only stored for 14 days (from the initial date they are started and saved); if you wait longer than this between starting and finishing your claim, it will be cleared from our system and you will need to start again from the beginning.

Request a home visit

We can visit you at home to help you with your claim, but only if you can't do it online or by visiting one of our Gateway Centres (if you're unable to leave your home). Request a home visit using our benefits enquiry form.

Check your account online

Once you have made your claim, you can check information about your housing benefit and Council Tax Reduction claim, including entitlement details and housing benefit payments online though your Salford customer account.

Scan Zone

After you’ve made your claim we may contact you to supply further supporting evidence. You can do so by visiting one of our Scan Zones. Scan Zones are located in all the Gateways and Broughton Hub, they are touch screen, tablet devices that allow customers to self-scan documents.

Benefits

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